Misplaced luggage is a growing problem in the travel industry. The increasing volume of air traffic and the increasing congestion in airports contribute to flight delays and misplaced luggage. Although adhesive paper tags bearing the intended destination of a passenger's luggage have been used for decades, luggage is often misplaced and mishandled. Air travelers worry whether their luggage will arrive at their intended destination and often have to extend their time at baggage carousels while waiting for luggage that may not arrive. This is a particularly pressing problem for business travelers whose luggage may contain time sensitive materials.
In addition, even with increased security measures at airports, there still exists a chance that an item of luggage may end up in an aircraft which is not transporting the corresponding passenger. Alternatively, a passenger may enter an aircraft and his or her luggage may not be in that aircraft. If luggage is misplaced, the luggage may end up at a different location than the passenger's intended destination resulting in unsatisfied passengers and increased costs for the airline to deliver the luggage to its correct destination.
Traditional luggage identification systems suffer from deficiencies inherent in their structure. Printed paper tags attached by adhesives during check-in require inspection by security personnel, which is both time-consuming and prone to human error. Bar codes and other forms of optical identification used by airports are also prone to error. Each item of luggage must be individually scanned and such scanning does not guarantee that the luggage will be placed on the correct aircraft. Further, these paper tags are flimsy and may fall off or be torn off resulting in misrouted luggage.
Several systems have been implemented to remedy the problem of lost or misplaced bags. U.S. Pat. No. 5,576,692 describes a system for tracking luggage where a beeper device is attached to an article of luggage. If luggage is misplaced, a user calls a number associated with the beeper. The call causes the beeper to emit a sound alerting airline personnel in the immediate vicinity to the presence of the misplaced luggage. Airline personnel may subsequently contact the user and provide the user with the location of the misplaced luggage. This system, however, requires airline personnel to be vigilant in locating the misplaced baggage. Moreover, if no personnel are in the vicinity of the luggage, the luggage cannot be rerouted to its intended destination.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,452 describes a baggage identification system wherein a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) label is placed in a luggage identification tag. The labels are detected by receiver stations located throughout an airport terminal. However, due to the limited range of RFID signals, multiple receiver stations are necessitated and must be placed throughout the terminal, which is neither cost-efficient or space-efficient. Further, the luggage may not be monitored when the tag is not in proximity to the tracking stations.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,199,712, describes an RFID system that can be used to identify the position of a passenger or their luggage in an aircraft. In this system, an RFID tag is placed on a passenger's ticket and RFID labels are attached to the passenger's luggage. A network of RFID readers is positioned inside the cabin of an aircraft and can be used to determine the location of luggage and the passenger. The system is limited inasmuch as the readers must be relatively close to the corresponding tag for the system to work.
Current systems are not designed to track luggage over long ranges. The limitations of the systems which employ RFID or visual identification limit the efficacy of luggage tracking and fail to ensure that luggage is loaded onto the same aircraft as a corresponding passenger.